


i'm broken, don't break me

by J_Amore



Category: Dead To Me (TV)
Genre: Gen, Light Angst, Post Season 2
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:55:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24908761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/J_Amore/pseuds/J_Amore
Summary: ... it’s so easy to get mad at the one person she knows won’t give up on her no matter how much she deserves it.
Comments: 26
Kudos: 51





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So that scene where Jen snaps at Judy in 2x05 for hovering and tells Judy she needs space kind of made my heart break for Judy a little bit because she just looked so sad, so I decided to do it to her again because I’m mean. Sorry. Let’s say this is post-season 2. The car accident happened but nothing else major has occurred (Charlie minds his damn business and doesn’t read the letters). Also, the title makes this sound much more angsty than it’s actually going to be… it’s not that bad, I promise, I’m just bad at naming my stories so I pick random lines from random songs (Some Devil by Dave Matthews in this case). First fic for this fandom but I'm absolutely in love with Jen and Judy and this show.

“Goooood morning!” Judy sings out as she makes her way into the kitchen, a face-splitting smile stretching across her mouth as she practically glides into place behind the island like it’s the most natural thing in the world. 

Jen barely glances up, just catching the tail of Judy’s floral printed wrap dress pass her eye-line as the brunette floats pass. “Oh, yeah, morning Jude,” Jen mumbles, quickly returning her eyes to the screen of her laptop and trying not to break her concentration. 

Jen hears cabinets closing and ceramic clanging and assumes Judy’s fixing herself to a cup of coffee. She doesn’t bother looking up again but her suspicions are confirmed minutes later when the smell of Colombian dark roast assaults her sense and she feels Judy, coffee in hand, peering over her shoulder. 

A second mug is set down next to Jen to replace the first cup she finished nearly an hour ago and she can only nod gratefully at Judy’s thoughtfulness as she squints at the words on the screen in front of her. “Trying to update this fucking listing for the 6th fucking time this week because the sellers are fucking morons—” 

“Oh! That’s a pretty house!” Judy exclaims, interrupting Jen’s angry typing to point at the picture of Jen’s latest listing. “I love the bay window!” 

Jen punches the keys on her keyboard a little more forcefully than necessary. “Yeah, it better be fucking pretty because the sellers have no fucking clue what the actual value of their home is and are expecting me to somehow get them $150 thousand over neighboring comps.”

“Yikes. Well, if anyone can do it, it’s you,” Judy says cheerfully. Jen doesn’t have to look over her shoulder to know Judy is giving her an encouraging smile. 

Jen just grumbles and continues scanning her notes to make sure she didn’t overlook anything she meant to add to the listing. She feels a light squeeze on her shoulder as Judy moves away. 

“Are you hungry? I can make pancakes,” Judy calls out, head buried in the pantry in search of ingredients. “Normally I’d make chocolate chip because those are Henry’s favorite but today I’m thinking blueberry because those are _my_ favorite and today is—”

_How high were the ceilings in the master again?_ Jen asks herself, rummaging through various papers and folders sprawled out across the island. She vaguely registers Judy’s question, waving her off without much thought. “Yeah, whatever, just make the fucking pancakes, Judy. I don’t care.” 

“Okay,” Judy says softly as she slinks off towards the pantry. Jen feels like an asshole for a split second but she _really_ needs to concentrate right now. She’ll be less of a jerk when she’s done working. 

Jen manages to type out two whole sentences before the sound of Judy rummaging through the kitchen cabinets and opening and closing the refrigerator door has her skin itching. She rolls her neck slowly from side to side and lets out a low groan of frustration. This listing should have been up days ago and these clients are two of the most obnoxious people she’s ever dealt with and she barely got any sleep last night because Charlie stayed out past curfew and she not only had to stay up to make sure he got home safely but also to yell at him for being an inconsiderate little shit and that took longer than she anticipated. 

“Shoot! We’re out of butter,” Judy says suddenly, her airy voice breaking into Jen’s winding thoughts. “You think the boys will mind if I use margarine instead? I know it’s similar but some people can be picky about their substitutes. Maybe there’s some back—”

“Jesus Christ, Judy! Can you just stop babbling about pancakes and butter for two fucking seconds!” Jen snaps, jerking her head up just in time to see Judy flinch at the abrupt harshness of her voice. It’s too early for guilt so Jen quickly returns her eyes to the screen with a sigh, not wanting to see Judy’s wide wounded eyes staring back at her like she’s some fucking monster and Judy’s some sort of hurt cartoon lamb she just kicked. “I’m trying to get this done and I can’t focus with you—-great! Oh, this is just fucking great! Of course, this would happen right now!” 

"What’s wrong?” Judy asks, quickly coming over to stand at Jen’s side despite the stricken look Jen saw on her face a second ago. 

Jen slams her open palm against the keyboard twice before throwing herself back against her chair with a humorless laugh. “The fucking wifi went down.” 

“Let me see.” Judy leans forward, pushing her fingers across the laptop’s touchpad and clicking earnestly. 

“Yeah, I already clicked the little thing with the lines—it’s not working,” Jen huffs loudly, rolling her eyes at her shitty luck. 

Judy pulls her lip between her teeth, tilting her head and squinting at the screen in thought before perking up with a hopeful smile as if she’s just been struck with some sort of illuminating realization. “Oh! Maybe there’s a problem with your network settings,” she suggests, her sunny optimism a stark and unwelcome contrast to Jen’s burning rage. “The computers at the senior center are always going down and I’ve watched the tech guy run this diagnostic thing that usually—” 

“What the hell just happened?” Jen cuts in as Judy does _something_ that plunges the screen into total darkness. 

Judy draws back with a frown, just as surprised as Jen. “Guess that didn’t work.” 

“Where the fuck did my listing go, Judy?” Jen asks, bloodshot eyes fixed on her own scowling face reflected back at her on the now black screen. 

“I… I don’t know. It was there a second ago!” Judy stammers.

“What the fuck did you do?” Jen demands, angry words slipping through gritted teeth as she twists her head to see Judy physically retreat into herself. 

Judy shakes her head frantically, her face filling with panic as she nervously picks at her fingernails with her teeth. “I don’t know! I pressed the circle thingy—”

“Why would you press the circle thingy!” 

“I don’t know! I’m sorry! I was trying to help!”

Jen doesn’t bother hiding her frustration, slamming her fist against the table. “Goddamnit, Judy! You just made me lose over an hour of work! I’m going to have to do the whole fucking thing over again!”

“Jen, I’m sorry!” Judy cries desperately. “Let me try to get it back.”

“No! Just leave it! You’ve done enough.”

Judy leans over Jen once again to reach the keyboard, intent of remedying her error. “Maybe I can fix—”

“Fucking stop! Don’t touch it!” Jen shouts, snatching Judy’s wrist and flinging it away from the laptop. 

Judy jumps back, her eyes squeezed tight as if she’s expecting Jen to continue berating her. After a moment she cracks her eyes open to find Jen stewing silently at the darkened screen. “I’m sorry,” she says quietly. “I just wanted to help.”

“Well you didn’t help, Judy, you just fucked everything up,” Jen says, slamming the laptop shut in frustration. 

“I’m sorry.” 

Jen props her elbows on the table, massaging her fingers into her temples to ward off the monstrous headache she feels creeping in. “Just forget it. I’ll figure it out.”

“Are you sure I can’t do something to help?” Judy asks, hesitantly extending a hand like she wants to comfort Jen but withdrawing it before she can make contact. “I feel awful.” 

“Yeah,” Jen drawls, she’s completely done with this day and it’s not even 9 am. “You can leave me alone.” 

“What?” Judy practically whispers as if Jen had struck her. 

Jen doesn’t have the strength to lift her head and see if Judy looks as devastated as she sounds, and she honestly can’t subject herself to Judy’s big sad eyes when she already feels like a total failure. Work has been an unyielding nightmare, Charlie has been testing her patience like it’s his fucking job, Henry’s an angel but she’s certain she’s going to fuck that up at some point too, and Judy—well, Judy’s been pretty perfect and insanely sweet to her and the boys and kinder than any person has the right to be. She’s also probably the best thing in Jen’s life right now, and it’s so easy to get mad at the one person she knows won’t give up on her no matter how much she deserves it. And God, she’s such an asshole for taking advantage of Judy’s kind heart and innate vulnerability, for using her friend as a safe outlet for her anger—like Judy’s the human equivalent of a stress ball. Not to mention she’s a fucking hypocrite too because she’d tear anybody else’s head off for doing to Judy what she’s doing to Judy.

But she can’t help but be pissed. She had been re-tooling that listing for days, trying to make the miserable sellers happy, and she was _so close_ to being finished. Now she’s going to have to do the whole thing over again and she doesn’t need any distractions. And Judy could be pretty damn distracting. 

“Look,” Jen sighs, unwilling to further confront her own failings as a friend at the moment. “I’m sorry, Jude, I just really need to get this done and I can’t concentrate if you’re puttering around the kitchen like the fucking pancake fairy." 

“Oh. Okay,” comes Judy’s muted reply. She stands beside Jen, awkwardly wringing her hands together before dropping her head and starting towards the back door. “I guess I’ll go then.”


	2. Chapter 2

Removing her glasses with a tired sigh, Jen glances regrettably at the back door. At her less than gentle request, Judy had slinked away with hunched shoulders and sluggish footsteps and disappeared into the yard. Jen wants to remain angry, to hold onto the frustrating feelings of exhaustion and anxiety that made her snap at her best friend like an untrained Doberman and sent Judy retreating from her with her tail between her legs, but as soon as she heard the soft thump of the back door sliding closed behind Judy—-because Judy is nothing like Jen and can’t even bring herself to close a _door_ angrily, let alone lash out at a living breathing person—all that frustration and anger had morphed into a heavy chest-splitting feeling of guilt and Jen doesn’t care for that shit at all. 

Her laptop comes back to life with a resounding chime, drawing Jen’s attention away from the door and back to her work. After a few minutes and a simple prompt, her previously open browser page is restored and displaying her latest listing with only the last two sentences of her wording missing—because auto-save is a thing and Jen is an asshole. 

Jen can’t help the humorless chuckle that bubbles from that back of her throat at the realization. She had done what too many people in Judy’s life had made a habit of, what she herself has urged Judy not to stand for—she had made Judy feel small and stupid _for two fucking sentences._ All of a sudden her anger is back, this time aptly aimed at herself. It takes every bit of her admittedly anemic self-restraint to keep from throwing her laptop at the wall. 

The sound of Henry’s feet dancing down the staircase is enough of an excuse for Jen to snap out of her self-loathing and shove her laptop away in disgust. 

“Ooh! Judy’s making pancakes?!” Henry exclaims excitedly as he barrels into the kitchen with way too much energy for the early hour. He beelines for the countertop and tips Judy’s abandoned mixing bowl towards himself to take a peek at the batter. 

Jen tries to hide her grimace as she stands from her stool and takes in the hopeful look on her son’s face. Disappointing two people she loves for the price of one before 8 am is really quite impressive—she should win some sort of prize for being the absolute worst. 

“She was but she had to go,” Jen explains cagily. “We’re having cereal for breakfast today, bud.” 

Henry’s face falls but only for a moment before he’s shrugging and climbing onto a kitchen stool looking like he doesn’t have a care in the world. Jen breathes out a sigh of relief, grateful for her sweet easy-going boy. 

“Okay. I like cereal,” Henry says easily, watching as Jen turns to fish a bowl out the top cupboard. “Is Judy coming back to eat with us? I want to give her her birthday present before school.” 

Henry’s favorite dinosaur bowl, the one he’s had since he was 4 years old, slips from Jen’s hands, bouncing against the countertop with a series of loud clangs but thankfully not shattering. Jen fumbles with the unruly bowl for a few seconds, eventually managing to steady it under her palm before whirling around to face her son. 

“ _Her what_?” 

“Her birthday present. I made it myself,” Henry chirps proudly. 

“Shit. Are you sure today is Judy’s birthday?” 

Jen tries to focus—she had a whole thing planned for Judy’s birthday. An afternoon at the beach. Dinner with the boys. Judy’s present is even sitting unwrapped on the floor of her closet because she couldn’t find wrapping paper that didn’t make her want to barf. And she was supposed to pick up a bottle of wine on the way home from work—that ridiculously over-priced chardonnay a client had given Jen one time after she closed on an offer well over asking. Judy had insisted on celebrating Jen’s big sale that night with a homemade cherry pie and Jen happily cracked open the bottle of wine to share with her after the boys went to sleep—it was smooth and oaky and way too expensive for their usual indulging. But Jen very vividly remembers Judy taking a long sip and licking her lips, practically moaning at the taste, so, of course, she had made a mental note to buy that particular bottle of wine whenever she had a reason to. Judy’s birthday was going to be that reason. 

She turns and swivels her neck, trying to get a look at the corkboard in the adjoining hallway. Only the calendar is pinned open to three months ago and therefore useless. She had been looking forward to surprising Judy for weeks, there’s no way she would have overlooked her birthday.

“You don’t know your wife’s birthday? Shame on you,” Charlie snarks as he shuffles into the kitchen with his headphones around his neck and a grin on his face. 

"Char, shut up,” Jen snaps, still reeling. “Judy’s birthday is not today. Judy’s birthday is the 21st and the 21st is—”

“Today,” Charlie says, voice dripping with his typical teenage apathy.

Jen hazily pushes a bowl and a box of cereal towards Henry before turning her back to her sons and muttering a string of _fucks_ under her breath. After taking a moment to collect herself, Jen turns back to face the boys, looking over Henry’s head towards the yard. 

“What’s wrong, Mom?” Henry asks. 

“Nothing,” Jen answers with a dismissive shake of her head and a strained smile—partially for her son’s benefit but also because she has an idea that involves using said son as a pawn to lure Judy back from the guesthouse because she knows Judy can’t say no to Henry’s sweet little cherubic face and she’s not quite ready to have the conversation she needs to have with the other woman. “Why don’t you run out to the guest house and ask Judy to come to breakfast?” she suggests. 

"She’s not there,” Charlie chimes in as he shovels a handful of dry cereal directly from the box into his mouth. 

Jen can’t help but cringe and crinkle her nose at her son’s indelicate eating habits. ”She’s not?” 

“Nope,” Charlie answers. “I saw her from my window sitting out front in her car crying a few minutes ago and now her car is gone.” 

Jen didn’t think it was possible to feel worse than she already did about losing her temper with Judy, but apparently the universe found a whole new level of guilt to acquaint her with. 

Her mind conjures up the heartbreaking visual of Judy alone and crying in Abe’s old car _on her fucking birthday_ , no less, and she can’t help but be reminded of the last time she had witnessed Judy crying in that car—that fateful night months back when she had pushed Judy to a breaking point so soul-shattering and terrifying that she had been sure she’d lose Judy forever. That night, terrified of losing the person she had come to rely on more than anyone in her life, Jen had begged Judy to get angry with her, to punish her for her cruelty, but Judy had instead turned her pain inward, sparing Jen and punishing herself for loving too much and too freely. The sight had nearly destroyed Jen. Feeling Judy shake in her arms as sobs tore through her body like a violent storm had been much worse than any physical punishment Jen could have provoked from Judy. 

But Judy, painfully amendable and selflessly forgiving, had bounced back quickly and never spoke of that tempestuous night again. There had been so much that needed discussing, so much that had been left unsaid after their emotional outbursts, but Jen couldn’t bring herself to start the conversation and Judy didn’t seem willing to either. So Jen eventually put the images of Judy screaming and sobbing while beating her own fists against her chest out of her mind because it hurt too much to think about how she had been the one to bring Judy to that dark place. 

Since they met, Jen has been encouraging Judy to stand up for herself, to be less pliable, less yielding to people who don’t deserve her good-natured self-sacrificing —people like Judy’s mother and former (now deceased thanks to Jen) fiancé. Jen hates Eleanor Hale and Steve Wood for what they did to Judy, for how they toyed with her head and took advantage of her insecurities, but deep down Jen feels shame for the parts of her that resemble the worst of them. 

On more than one occasion Jen has pushed at Judy knowing the other woman would bend for her. She had steamrolled over Judy’s needs and boundaries at times, telling herself it was necessary and different because she had Judy’s best interest at heart, because she loves Judy. There were small moments too, where she’d snap abrasively or say something unkind in the heat of the moment and Judy would retreat into herself even more and apologize to _her,_ and Jen could only sigh in return and let her because sometimes she gets tired of being the bad guy. Judy of course never held her indiscretions against her, but Jen’s stomach rolls with the unsettling thought that maybe, sometimes, she’s no better than Judy’s abusers. 

“Why was Judy crying?” Henry asks, his small worried voice breaking Jen out of her spiraling thoughts before she can fully crumble under their weight. “It’s her birthday, she shouldn’t be sad.” 

“Maybe because mom spent all morning screaming at her,” Charlie answers, ever so helpfully. His eyes shift languidly to glare at Jen. “Your voice travels.” 

"I did not,” Jen fires back, stunned and defensive, before lamely adding, “It was not all morning.” 

Henry frowns. “Mom, I don’t want Judy to be sad and alone on her birthday.” 

Jen feels the pressure of her son’s soft blue eyes pleading with her to fix the mess she made and her chest tightens even more. "I don’t want that either, boop,” she says. “We’ll call her, okay? She probably just went into work early.”

“Okay,” Henry mumbles into his bowl of cereal.

Jen grabs her cell phone and takes a deep breath. She isn’t quite ready to confront Judy just yet, she had been planning on stewing in her shame and guilt for a while longer before eventually finding Judy and apologizing for being such a massive bitch, but she can’t let Judy start off her birthday thinking she did something wrong. And Henry would never forgive her if she didn’t at least try to get Judy back to receive his gift. 

Shakily her fingers scroll to Judy’s contact in her recent call log—she hasn’t been this nervous about calling Judy since _Steve._ She hits call and offers Henry a forced smile as she racks her brain for words she can string together that can properly convey to Judy how shitty she feels. 

Judy’s ridiculous ring tone sounds from the far side of the counter where Charlie stands brandishing the ringing phone with an eyebrow raised.

“Looks like she forgot her phone. Probably cause you ran her out of here like a fucking psycho,” Charlie cracks. 

“Shit,” Jen curses to herself. “And watch your mouth!” 

“So Judy’s alone and sad and we can’t even talk to her?” Henry asks, worry creasing his tiny brow. 

Jen’s heart breaks at the sadness in her son’s voice. She loves how warm and sensitive Henry could be, even if she has no idea where he got it from.

“Don’t worry about it, sweetie,” Jen says, trying to comfort the boy. “I’ll get ahold of Judy and tonight we’ll have a big birthday dinner for her. Okay?”

Henry perks up at that. "With cake?” 

Jen smiles at her son. She’ll get Judy the biggest fucking cake she can find. “Of course with cake.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Please let me know what you think if you have a moment....because I don't know how I feel about this chapter.


End file.
